A secret of 'Dark Knight' success: villains in Batman films

Whether it's the movies in his Batman trilogy or "Inception," he manages to balance big special effects with real characters -- even if, as in Batman, they're based on comic books. It all feels personal, which is an impressive feat when your budget is in the hundreds of millions.

He's got a lot of tools in his bag of tricks, but one of the most effective is his excellent choice of villains and the people who play them. By the time the last Batman franchise played out, we were down to Poison Ivy and Mr. Freeze. Nolan goes with scarier bad guys and uses really good actors to portray them. It may be overstating it to say that his villains are his secret weapon, but they certainly don't hurt.

Here's a look at them through the first couple of films in the trilogy and a preview of Bane in "The Dark Knight Rises."

Liam Neeson as Henri Ducard/Ra's al Ghulin "Batman Begins" -- What's great about him is his dual nature -- much like Bruce Wayne and Batman, only a lot crazier (and that's saying something). His good half is a mentor to a grieving, confused Bruce Wayne, reeling from his parents' death. His bad half believes that the only way to save Gotham is to destroy it, so that's what he sets out to do. He's a martial-arts expert, and at the time, it seemed as if Neeson was a curious choice for that. He's done so much action since, in retrospect he looks like a perfect fit.

Cillian Murphy as Dr. Jonathan Crane/Scarecrow in "Batman Begins" -- Scariest of all Batman villains, at least in the film series. He's a psychiatrist who uses the patients at Arkham Asylum as test subjects for poisons he's developing that are intended to induce fear. They work, even on Bruce Wayne. When he puts on a burlap sack as a mask and releases the toxic gas that makes his subjects hallucinate, it's genuinely scary. And Murphy, with his haunting eyes enhanced by glasses, looks the part -- really smart, and really dangerous, too.

Heath Ledger as the Joker in "The Dark Knight" -- This performance is so iconic, not just in the Batman movies but in all movies of the last 15 or 20 years, that it's difficult to remember the time, long before the film was released, when still photos came out of Ledger in costume. It was a shock -- instead of the natty, colorful Joker Jack Nicholson played in Tim Burton's "Batman," this Joker was fractured, corrupt, broken, damaged in every way. Ledger went with that and gave a performance that was scary, funny and epic, sometimes in the same scene ("Want to see a magic trick?"). The Joker is a mystery, fearless in his plans because he doesn't care about the consequences and all the more dangerous for it. A truly great performance.

Aaron Eckhart as Harvey Dent/Two-Face in "The Dark Knight" -- Another character that mirrors the dual nature of Bruce Wayne and Batman. Dent is the tough-on-crime district attorney who is determined to clean up Gotham -- and someone Batman thinks could be an ally in his own quest for justice. But when mobsters burn off half his face with acid, he goes insane and seeks a different kind of justice. The theme of dual natures runs throughout Nolan's series of films, and makes them all the richer. Eckhart is an underrated actor, and although he is plenty menacing as Two-Face, he also makes the character somewhat empathetic, a man whose plans and dreams have been destroyed. And the hospital scene with the joker is classic. ("Now we're talkin'!")

Tom Hardy as Bane in "The Dark Knight Rises" -- We'll see. But Hardy is a fantastic actor, among the best working today. (For proof see "Bronson," "RocknRolla," "Inception," "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy" -- you get the idea.) Bane in the comics is both brilliant and brutal, despite (or because of) having been raised in a prison to complete his father's sentence. Bane is massively imposing, in both mind and body. He wears a mask that allows Venom, a drug that enhances his abilities, to circulate evenly (at least in the comics). After trailers came out there was concern that the mask would make his dialogue hard to understand, but if anyone can work with that, it's Nolan. In comic lore Bane is famous for breaking Batman's back. Will that happen here? We'll see. Bill Goodykoontz